This is the book on singing bowls we have waited for. Frank Perry was there from the beginning, from when the first bowls became known in the West in the early 1970s, and he has been with them ever since, making in all 105 different recordings, most of them featuring bowls. Covered in this book are no less than 250 different styles of bowl and over 100 techniques of drawing sound from them. Frank covers the wands and mallets used and how to choose them, associated instruments like ting-sha and drilbu, how to look after your bowls and what to watch for when buying them.

Most of all though, this is a book about developing, listening and experiencing a singing bowl. Frank helps you identify the whole range of partials that are to be heard in the bowls sound, and this is supported by careful acoustical analysis. Every sound you make from every bowl, though, is a meditation, and Frank helps you understand what you are listening to and what you are connecting with. That may be one of the meditation Buddhas, or it may be a planet or star, or it may be a stimulation in one of your chakras. It is all here – the ability, indeed, to make bowls the basis of your spiritual path and to get to know yourself better.

It also offers bowls as a path to the healing of self and others. Among the many gems in this book are the cymatic photographs by John Stuart Reid of the sound patterns created by the bowls, and he writes, 'Frank Perry is one of those rare people who are totally committed to a subject and pursue it with such great passion that it inspires others'. Sound healer James d'Angelo writes, 'No other book in the field of working with sound for healing and spiritual development is as knowledgeable, penetrating and comprehensive as this'.